


Cupcakes

by LadyRazorsharp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cupcakes, Gen, Genderfluid Pidge | Katie Holt, Older And Wiser, Punk, ambiguous character, hunk explains non-binary, space mall reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRazorsharp/pseuds/LadyRazorsharp
Summary: Hunk likes Pidge. Hunk likes cupcakes. To him, it's as simple as that.





	Cupcakes

**_AN: First story for the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom! Title is inspired by a video done by a transgender woman noting how she was getting tired of explaining what ‘non-binary’ meant, and how she’d rather 1) just be treated like a person and 2) have a cupcake.  I’m going with the thought that Pidge is at least 18 (smol Pidge is smol) and Hunk is 19-20ish._ **

 

**Cupcakes**

By The Lady Razorsharp

_ Hunk likes Pidge. Hunk likes cupcakes. To him, it’s as simple as that. _

 

“Hey!” Hunk approaches the agreed-to meeting place right on time, ever-present smile in place and radiating good humor, as he has since his friend has known him. Sure, there’s a few more lines at the corners of Hunk’s eyes that weren’t there the last time they’d talked, but his friend has heard that the intervening years have been...busy ones, to put it mildly.

Hunk slides into the booth, settling a wrapped plate between them. His friend eyes the plate dubiously; of all the things Hunk was known for, cooking wasn’t one. Hunk catches this hesitation and laughs, deflecting any awkwardness like water from a duck’s back.

“They’re cupcakes. Yeah, I made ‘em,” he confirms. “It’s the damnedest thing; it took me going to another galaxy to figure out that I’m a pretty good cook!” He winks. “I’ve got a job waiting for me in a space mall food court, if I ever get tired of what I’m doing now.”

What he’s doing now, his friend knows, is something of a mystery, and it’s there that the conversation begins. “You still can’t talk about it?”

Hunk glances down at his hands, at the long-healed lines of scars and shiny yellow calluses that wink up at him in the light. “No, I better not. Let’s just say it’s more than I ever thought I’d do with my life. I’m pretty lucky.” His grin dawns again. “The people I work with, they’re--well, they’re just awesome.”

“They must be, for such high praise from you.”  The friend arches an eyebrow, and Hunk inches back a fraction in the seat, almost as if he knows where this is going. “Have you met anyone special out there in a galaxy far, far away?”

Hunk blushes to the edge of his ochre headwrap. “Uh, well...my job doesn’t really give me much chances for that, but there’s this one....girl, I guess you could call her, she’s kinda nice. Her name’s Shay. I, uh, helped her out of a jam once. Me and my friends, that is.” Hunk’s fingers stray to the plate and begin tugging the edge around in small increments. “It’s kinda long distance, so I don’t know how it’s gonna work out.”

“I see.” The friend studies Hunk for a long moment, and when the big man’s blush doesn’t fade, it’s clear that there is something else afoot. “Anyone closer to home?”

Hunk screws up his face and--yes, there it goes, the hand behind the head--utters an embarrassed laugh. “Well, yeah, maybe. One of my teammates, Pidge. We hang out from time to time.” His eyes crinkle. “We just get each other, you know?”

The friend’s eyebrows meet. There’s a detail missing here somewhere, something that almost slipped by. Hunk was never a ladies’ man back in the day, but still, girls seemed to gravitate toward him even if he was a little clueless. ‘Teddy bear’ was the predominant term that had been floated by his admirers, and ‘friendzone’ wasn’t a dirty word for him because he’d embraced it. His friend can’t recall seeing Hunk with just one girl, he was surrounded by all of them. Still, that didn’t automatically classify Hunk as gay, but now the friend was curious.

“So this Pidge, he--”

“She,” Hunk corrects. “Katie’s her real name, but she goes by Pidge.” A shrug. “It fits her. She’s about the size of a pigeon.” He lowers his head to add sotto voce: “Don’t tell her I said that.” They laugh together, and Hunk pulls out his phone. “Here, I’ll show you what I mean.” He thumbs through the photos--quite a few, judging by the time he spends scrolling--and finally hands the phone over. “There’s Pidge, the one in the glasses.”

The friend gazes at the photo of the five people in the frame: A grinning Hunk; a wiry kid making ‘finger-guns’ at the camera; a muscular man with a livid scar across his nose and a shock of white hair falling over his forehead; a slender man in a red jacket with inky hair to his collar; and a small person with bushy auburn hair and apple-green eyes behind frameless glasses. It’s this last person that the friend takes a long look at, trying to find any indication of gender and failing. If she  _ is _ a girl, the poor thing is stick-straight and ironing-board flat. The limbs are sturdy, but not defined with muscle. The face is impish, sharp-chinned, hovering somewhere between teen and adult. However, there is enough intelligence behind those eyes for a dozen people, and it’s this last that makes the friend smile before handing the phone back.

“I see what you mean,” says the friend. “I can also see why she chooses not to use her real name.”

A lesser man might have taken offense to this, but Hunk merely raises an eyebrow; apparently, he’s no stranger to this line of questioning. “You mean, she doesn’t look much like a girl,” he replies, not a question. “No. It’s...complicated, but let’s just say it was better for her to make everyone think she was a guy, and she...I dunno, just never stopped.” Hunk shrugs. “To me, Pidge is just Pidge.”

His friend leans forward, chin in hands. “What do you mean? Can you elaborate?”

Hunk’s grin returns. “I should have remembered that about you--sociology degree and all that.” He thinks for a moment, then unwraps the plate to reveal six cupcakes--three devil’s food with fat swirls of chocolate icing, three yellow with a smooth coating of vanilla icing. “It’s like these cupcakes. They’re all tasty, they’re all sweet, and they’re all basically the same. Sure, they come in different flavors, but that doesn’t matter so much as the fact that they’re cupcakes. We could even switch the flavors around and end up with the same result: Tasty, sweet, cupcakes.” He shrugs. “If you like cupcakes, you could probably care less what flavor they are. You’d just be all, ‘Hey, bonus, cupcakes!’ and enjoy.” His eyes come up to meet those of his friend. “Same with Pidge. Sometimes I forget and say ‘he’ or ‘Hey dude’ but that’s just because I do that with everyone. It doesn’t really matter. Pidge never gets offended, since, yanno, she wanted everyone to think she was a guy anyway.”

They’ve known each other long enough that the friend decides it’s time to dig a little deeper--and yes, Hunk is correct, this is entirely too fascinating. “What about--” The friend breaks off meaningfully, raising an eyebrow.

Hunk blushes, but it’s only a dusting over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, we’ve--fooled around a few times. Nothing serious. Although I think Pidge studied like, the physics of kissing, because man, she can kiss the horns off a gronkar--uh, not that you’d know what that is, but trust me, that’s good.”

“I see. I guess that bodes well for anything that comes next.”

“I hope so,” Hunk admits. “Although, that’s nice and all, but it’s not where we’re coming from, you know? If she’s okay with it, I’m okay with it, but we’re not gonna go at it like rabbits or anything.”  He leans back, taking on a thoughtful tone, fingers smoothing the edge of the plastic wrap. “That’s not why I hang out with him. Her. Pidge.” He smiles, eyes flicking to that of his friend and back to the view over his friend’s shoulder. “I just--I never know what he’s gonna do next, and I wanna stick around and be a part of it, you know?”

“Sounds pretty serious.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Hunk’s gaze lowers to the table, his smile gaining fondness as the seconds tick by. “A lot in our lives is sort of up in the air all the time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t wait to be important to someone, or hold off on letting them be important to you.” He shakes his head, the lines on his face deepening for just a moment. “We don’t live long enough for that.”

The friend smiles at this sagely pronouncement. “You haven’t just learned to cook,” they quip, before the mood can turn too maudlin. “That was pretty wise.”

Hunk bursts out laughing. “Don’t tell my team; it’ll damage my rep.” He shoves the plate toward his friend. “Cupcake?”

The friend takes one without looking. “Don’t mind if I do.”

\--End--


End file.
